Retribution (9 page)

“General,” said Dog.

“Colonel, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m glad we’re working together.”

“We’ll do our best.”

“That’s the spirit, Bastian,” said Woods. “Your people are to coordinate the intelligence, the Marines will be the muscle. Aircraft from the
Lincoln
will fly cover. Everybody on the same page?”

Dog reached for his coffee as Woods continued. The specific operation plans would have to be developed by the Marine Corps officers.

“Your people would be very valuable, Colonel,” said Harrison. “Your Whiplash crew?”

“My officer in charge of Whiplash is aboard the
Abner Read,
” said Dog. “I don’t—”

“We’ll airlift him to the
Lincoln,
” said Woods. “What other problems do I have to solve?”

“No problems,” said Dog. Harrison remained silent.

“Good,” said Woods. “Gentlemen, you have my authorization to do whatever it takes to make this work. This is the chance of a millennium. History will remember us.”

I hope in a good way, thought Dog as the screen blacked out.

T
HE NEW SEARCH PROGRAM
J
ENNIFER HAD DEVELOPED
called for the Megafortress to fly in a path calculated from the weather conditions and known characteristics of the ejection seats and the crew members’ parachutes. The flight path aligned the plane with the peculiarities of the survival radio’s transmission capabilities; while it didn’t actually boost its range, the effect was the same.

The program gave Englehardt the option of turning the aircraft over to the computer to fly or of following a path marked for him on the heads-up display projected in front of the windscreen.

“Which do you think I should do, Colonel?” the pilot
asked. “I’m comfortable with however you want to fly it,” Dog said. “If it were me, I’d want the stick in my hand. But completely your call.”

“Thank you, sir. I think I’ll fly it myself.”

“Very good.”

Lieutenant Englehardt was one of the new wave of pilots who’d come to Dreamland in the wake of the Megafortress’s success. Young enough to be Dog’s son, he was part of a generation that had known things like video games and computers their whole lives. They weren’t
comfortable
with technology—they’d been born into it, and accepted it the way Dog accepted his arms and legs.

Still, the fact that Englehardt would rather rely on himself than the computer impressed Dog. It was an old-fashioned conceit, but some prejudices were worth keeping.

Dog went over to the techie working the sea surveillance radar, Staff Sergeant Brian Daly. Aside from small boats anchored near the coast for the night, Daly had only a single contact on his screen: an Indian patrol vessel of the Jija Bai class. Roughly the equivalent of a small U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the ship carried two 7.62mm guns that could be used against aircraft, but posed no threat to the high-flying Megafortress.

“Two Tomcats from the
Lincoln
hailing us, Colonel,” said Kevin Sullivan, the copilot.

“Say hello.”

While Sullivan spoke to the pilots in the F-14 fighters, Dog looked over the shoulder of Technical Sergeant Thomas Rager, who manned the airborne radar. With the exception of the Tomcats, which had come from the
Lincoln
a good six hundred miles to the south, the Megafortress had the sky to itself. Neither Pakistan nor India had been able to get any flights airborne following the total collapse of their electrical networks, and the Chinese carrier
Khan,
now heading southward at a slow pace, had been damaged so severely that she appeared no longer capable of launching or recover
ing aircraft.

“Squids wish us well,” said Sullivan, using a universal nickname for sailors. “They’re on long-range reconnaissance for the carrier group. They haven’t heard anything from our guys or seen any flares over the water. They’ll keep looking.”

“Thank them.”

The weight of his fatigue settled on Dog’s shoulders. He’d tried to sleep in the cot in the unused upper Flighthawk bay earlier but couldn’t. He went to the back of the flight deck and pulled down the jumpseat, settling down, watching the crew at work.

He had to find his people. All of them, but Breanna especially.

He’d almost lost her twice before. Each time, the pain seemed to grow worse. Now it felt like an arrow the size of his fist, pushing against his heart.

Though they worked together, Dog couldn’t honestly say they were very close, at least not if closeness was measured by the things fathers and daughters usually did together. Every so often they’d go out to eat, but he couldn’t remember the last time they’d fished or biked or hiked. They didn’t even run together, something they both liked to do.

And yet he loved her deeply.

He felt himself drifting toward sleep. He started to let himself go, falling down toward oblivion. And then a shout startled him back to consciousness.

“We’ve got them!” yelled Sullivan.

Aboard the
Abner Read,
northern Arabian Sea
2150

“T
HIS IS THE BRIDGE
? I
FIGURED IT’D BE A LOT BIGGER.
G
OD,
it looks like an amusement arcade.”

Storm bristled but said nothing as Major Mack Smith sur
veyed the
Abner Read
’s bridge.

“Cool table. Moving maps, huh?”

“We call them charts, sir,” said the ensign who’d been assigned as the Dreamland contingent’s tour guide.

The rest of the Air Force people were crowding sickbay, but Major Smith claimed his sojourn in the water had left him refreshed. He certainly had a lot of energy, Storm thought.

“How does this work?” asked Mack, raising his hand above the holographic display.

“No, sir! No!” The ensign grabbed Mack’s hand before the major could swipe it through the display.

“Hey, take it easy, kid. I wasn’t going to touch anything.”

“The ensign was trying to point out that in some modes, the holographic table accepts commands much like a touchscreen,” said Storm stiffly. “So we look, don’t touch.”

“I get the picture.” Mack smirked at Storm, then went over to the helm. “Almost like jet controls, huh?”

It must have taken the helmsman a monumental effort not to elbow Mack as he breathed over his neck, looking at the ship’s “dashboard.”

Pity he was so disciplined, thought Storm.

“I didn’t think we’d be so low in the water,” said Mack. “I mean, did you guys take a hit during the battle?”

“We took several,” said Storm. “None of which were serious. The ship is designed to sit very low so it can’t be seen by radar, or the naked eye for that matter, except at very close range.”

“Wow. That’s wild,” said Mack. “It’s weird, though, you know? I mean, it’s a great boat and all. Don’t get me wrong. Glad to be here. But it’s low. What are we? Eight feet above the waves? Six?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified, sir,” said the ensign.

Storm decided the man would get shore leave and double beer rations for the rest of his life.

“
Sharkboat Two
is one mile north, Captain,” said the helmsman.

“Very good. Prepare to rendezvous.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

“Two more of your Dreamland people are aboard the Sharkboat, Major,” added Storm. “Captain Freah and one of his sergeants.”

“No shit. Man, it’s like a regular reunion.”

“Isn’t it, though? Would you like to meet the captain on the fantail?”

“There or the bar. Whatever you got.”

D
ANNY
F
REAH RESTORED SOME OF
S
TORM’S GOOD HUMOR,
modestly taking very little credit in the disabling of the Iranian minisub that had helped provoke the war between India and Pakistan. Storm had already heard a full report from his men in the Sharkboat and was well aware that Danny and his sergeant had nearly drowned while disabling the craft. Had it not been for the two Dreamlanders, the sub surely would have gotten away.

In Danny’s account, however, the Sharkboat arrived just at the critical juncture. The Navy people saved the day, securing the craft and fishing him out of the water.

Storm was still soaking up the praises of his men when Eyes interrupted to tell him that several more downed Dreamland crew members had been found.

“They’re from the
Levitow
,” Eyes told him over the ship’s intercom system. “They have six people in the water. They’re not far from the coast. Eighty miles southwest of us.”

“All right, we’ll pick them up, too,” Storm said. “Are the Chinese near them?”

“Negative. But there’s an Indian ship in the area. A guided missile frigate.”

“I’m not afraid of an Indian frigate,” said Storm. He ordered the crew to plot a course to the downed airmen and set sail at top speed.

“I’d like to participate in the rescue,” said Danny Freah after Storm finished issuing his orders.

“I’ll tell you what, Captain. If my medical officer releases
you to participate, you’re welcome to help.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“No, the pleasure’s mine.”

“The
Levitow
is Breanna Stockard’s plane,” said Danny. “She’s the colonel’s daughter.”

“Bastian’s daughter?” Storm hadn’t realized Colonel Bastian had a child, let alone that she was in the Air Force and under his command. “Bastian doesn’t seem old enough to have a pilot for a daughter.”

“You’d have to take that up with the colonel himself, sir.”

Aboard the
Bennett,
over the northern Arabian Sea
2151

D
OG GRABBED ONE OF THE HANDHOLDS ON THE AUXILIARY
control panel of the surface radar station as the Megafortress plunged closer to the water, pushing into a low orbit around the tiny rafts bobbing about twenty miles from the Indian coast. A fitful splash of white blinked from three of the small boats, emergency beacons showing the
Bennett
where they were.

Captain Jan Stewart, who’d been the
Levitow
’s copilot, was on the radio with Sullivan, telling him that all six of the crew members who’d gone out together had been able to hook up. There were no serious injuries, said Stewart, and now that they saw the Megafortress’s flares bursting through the cloud deck, they were in excellent spirits.

But the
Levitow
had been carrying eight people, not its usual six.

“Breanna and Zen went out after us,” Stewart told the
Bennett
’s copilot. “They were going to jump through the holes left by the escape hatches. None of us saw their parachutes. We’re sure they got out.”

Her voice sounded almost desperate.

“Indian Godavari-class frigate, four miles due south,” re
ported Sergeant Daly over the
Bennett
’s interphone circuit. “Godavari is equipped with OSA-ME surface-to-air missiles. NATO code name Gecko SA-N-4. Radar guided; range ten kilometers. Accurate to 16,400 feet.”

“How long before the
Abner Read
gets here?” Dog asked Sullivan.

The
Bennett
’s copilot told him that the ship had estimated it would take about two and a half hours.

“I’ll bet the Indian ship saw their flares and is homing in on the signal from Stewart’s radio,” added Lieutenant Englehardt, the pilot. “They’ll be close enough to see the beacons in a few minutes, if they haven’t already.”

“Let’s find out what they’re up to,” said Dog. “Contact them.”

He put his hands to his eyes. He was tired—beyond tired.

“Colonel, I have someone from the Indian ship acknowledging,” said the copilot. “Ship’s name is
Gomati
.”

Dog pushed his headset’s boom mike close to his mouth and dialed into the frequency used by the Indian ship. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh Bastian on Dreamland
Bennett.
I’d like to speak to the captain of the
Gomati.
”

“I am the executive officer,” replied a man in lightly accented English. “What can we do for you, Colonel?”

“You can hold your position away from my men,” said Dog. “We are conducting rescue operations.”

The Indian didn’t immediately reply. Dog knew he had a strong hand—the
Bennett
carried four Harpoon missiles on the rotating dispenser in her belly. One well-placed hit would disable the frigate; two would sink her.

And despite his orders not to engage any of the combatants, Dog had no compunctions about using the missiles to protect his people.

“Colonel Bastian,” said a new voice from the destroyer. “I am Captain Ajanta. Why are you warning us away from the men in the water? We intend to offer our assistance.”

“If it’s all the same to you, we’d prefer to take care of it ourselves,” Dog told him.

The Indian officer didn’t reply.

“I think you insulted him, Colonel,” said Lieutenant Englehardt over the interphone.

“Maybe.” Dog clicked back into the circuit and took a more diplomatic tact. “
Gomati,
we appreciate your offer of assistance. We already have a vessel en route and are in communication with the people in the water. We request that you stand by.”

“As you wish,” replied the Indian captain.

“I appreciate your offer to help,” said Dog. “Thank you.”

Indian Ocean,
off the Indian coast
Time unknown

W
ITH HIS ARMS COMPLETELY DRAINED OF ENERGY
, Z
EN
drifted along in the blackness, more flotsam than living being. He’d never been broken down so low, not even after he woke up in the hospital without the use of his legs.

Then all he’d been was angry. It was better than this, far better.

For the longest time he didn’t believe what they told him. Who would? Doctors were always Calamity Janes, telling you about all sorts of diseases and ailments you
might
have, depending on the outcome of this or that test. He had never liked doctors—not even the handful he was related to.

So his first reaction to the news was to say, flat out, “Get bent. My legs are fine. Just fine.”